A friend has a Vodafone provided Nexus S. He recently switched to Telecom and now says he has no service in Tawa. I can imagine he has no 3G service if in Tawa if Telecom only has 850 and the phone only does 900/1700/2100 but he should have voice service.

I should check but I wonder if he has no 3G icon on the phone and think it means there is no service at all?

If you don't have an 850MHz 3G capable phone, you will have very little coverage in New Zealand. If the phone doesn't have it, its simply not suitable for XT, unless you know where the 2100MHz coverage is, and that suits you (hint, its only in parts of some cities, so its unlikely to suit many people at all).

lchiu7: Yes worked it out. I had forgotten that Telecom does not do GSM so even having GSM/GPRS at 850 didn't help. He's going to need a new phone which is annoying since Gen-i told him the phone would work.